Boulders ready to start rolling

May 26, 2011

Written by

Sam Borden

Journal News columnist

You could hear the excitement in Dave LaPoint's voice Monday night, hear the anticipation of a baseball man on the verge of beginning yet another baseball adventure. LaPoint won a World Series with the Cardinals in 1982 and pitched Opening Day for the Yankees in the Bronx in 1990, but now he is charged with a different task: Bringing winning baseball to Rockland County.

Tonight, the Rockland Boulders play their first-ever game, on the road against the Newark Bears. LaPoint is their manager, his fourth stop in a managerial career that has seen him work in Bridgeport, Long Island and Adirondack. Now he comes to Rockland, to a brand-new stadium and a brand-new franchise.

"I've done it before," he says the other day. "In Adirondack (in 1995) we started from the ground floor, but it was nowhere near the level of this — this stadium, this area. People are ready."

Everyone is. LaPoint made his final cuts Monday morning, bringing his roster in line with Can-Am League rules. The independent league requires teams to have no more than four veterans (players with six years or more of professional service time) and no fewer than five rookies (players with less than one year of professional service time).

LaPoint, while abiding by the league rules, says he still has managed to put together an experienced team; only one player, he said, hasn't played pro ball before. Everyone else has gone through a spring training or played short-season ball, at least, which means "they have an idea how fast the game moves at this level," LaPoint says.

Tonight's starting pitcher, Bobby Blevins, was a star at Briarcliff before being drafted by the Dodgers in 2007. He pitched as high as Triple-A before parting ways with the organization this year and, at 26 years old, saw an opportunity to try to catch the eye of another MLB franchise by becoming Rockland's ace.

"It's a great new stadium, great area and lots of people are going to be watching," Blevins said. "We've got a great team, too. I think we have a legitimate chance at winning a championship."

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Another of the local players is outfielder Norm Hutchins, who grew up in Yonkers and graduated from Lincoln in 1994. He is, most assuredly, in the veteran category; Rockland will be the 23rd different team he has played for since being drafted by the Angels in the second round of the '94 draft.

Now living in Sleepy Hollow, Hutchins, 35, knows what to expect in the Can-Am League. He says the league is "sort of like High-A ball" in terms of quality, and LaPoint believes fans may be surprised by the talent level.

"This isn't a beer league," he says.

The Boulders will be a speed-based team, a philosophy LaPoint's old Cardinals manager, Whitey Herzog, used to preach. Power is hard enough to find at the major-league level, LaPoint explains, so in the minors he believes speed is a critical asset. "Speed never slumps," he says. "My goal is to have someone sliding every inning."

Hutchins is slated to hit fifth in the Boulders' lineup and, in a recent exhibition game, he says, "it felt like I was hitting behind four leadoff hitters. Our top four guys are all that kind of player. Get on base, run, make things happen. ... The other day it felt like I was getting up every inning."

That is by design from LaPoint, who crafted this roster by using the connections he's built up over more than a decade of managing and coaching in the minors. He ended up with the Rockland job after getting a recommendation from Met legend Gary Carter, whom he'd coached under when Carter managed the Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks in 2009.

Initially, LaPoint says, Boulders ownership had approached Carter about becoming the team's first manager. Carter declined, but spoke highly of LaPoint, who had been his pitching coach with the Ducks. "From there we went through the process and it worked out in the end," LaPoint says. "It's a terrific opportunity."

The players went through their final practice Wednesday at Rockland Community College as the new stadium, Provident Bank Park, is still being completed. The Boulders will start the season by playing on the road for nearly three weeks until the park is done, with the home opener set for June 16.

Hutchins, who played in a similar situation in Lancaster (Pa.) in 2005 — "new team, new stadium, the whole thing," he says — believes that Rockland fans will quickly become excited about more than just the novelty of the team.

"Just looking at the guys so far, we're good — like, really good," Hutchins says. "There is a lot of excitement about everything for sure, but we're also here to do more than just play. We want to win."